It looks like the feds are going to charge the guy who took pot shots at the White House with attempting to assassinate the President. From the article:
Authorities suspect Ortega has been in the area for weeks, coming back and forth to the Washington Mall. Before the shooting, he was detained by local police at an abandoned house. U.S. Park police say Ortega may have spent time blending in with Occupy D.C. protesters.
Apparently the Secret Service raided the Occupy DC folks looking for this guy. If this had been a tea party, I can promise you that it’d be all over CSGV’s insurrectionist timeline. In fact, if this guy had even a hint of being right wing, I can promise you Brady would be all atwitter about another dangerous nut with a gun.
But since the left-wing occupy movement has embraced this guy as one of their own, he’s going to get a pass from these groups, who apparently only care about some kinds of gun violence. If you want to understand why Bloomberg is the future of gun control, this is why. It’s really hard to take them seriously anymore. I follow CSGV, Brady, VPC and ProtestEasyGuns because it’s worth a laugh, not because I’m worried about what they are going to do next.
While I agree that ProtestEasyGuns, VPC, Brady, etc would probably be all of this if the guy had some ties to the right I don’t think it helps to try and paint the guy as a lefty. He might have been, but from the sounds of it his political leanings were probably shaped by the voices coming from a bowl of Cherrio’s more than anything else.
And when you’re THAT far off the reservation it doesn’t really matter what your political leanings are because you’re just flat out crazy above all else. Just like the dude with TEA Party ties that flew a plane into an IRS building, the Norway shooter, etc.
I don’t think he’s a lefty. I think he’s nuts. But that hasn’t stopped our opponents trying to make us own whackjobs they claim are part of the insurrectionist right.
If the loon really was 800m from the WH, he was using his AK as an artillery piece, with no ability to see a target to aim at and even if he could see something, point of hold would be so high he couldn’t use any normal rifle sight. Conspiracy to assassinate, perhaps, but no practical means to carry it out.
Sounds like they should add a felon-in-possession and discharging a firearm within the city, possession of a banned weapon and parole violation to have something real they can convict on.
I figure he was firing at an alien space ship, and happened to get his azimuth and elevation close, by accident.
While one could expect a group size something on the order of five to seven feet I don’t think there is a major problem getting the elevation close to correct. After all the gradation on the rear sight (overoptimistically) go out to 1000 meters.
That said, it would take someone with some skill and knowledge to accomplish it. If he is crazy that reduces the chances it was skill and not luck.